Spitfire One-Shot Collection
by Jon Chauttock
Summary: A collection of unrelated one-shots about Spitfire, based on an image of 130 writing prompts I found on the Internet. This is listed as T, but chapters will vary from K to M. All chapters will be Spitfire.
1. Lock

**Lock (Rated T for language)**

His door is locked.

I know what I had done was wrong. I know it, and yet… I'm still trying to go see him. I don't know why I'm not waiting a while for him to cool down. I just feel like I have to see him.

I knock on his door.

"Who is it?" He sounds cold, emotionless… nothing like the Wally West I'm used to.

"It's… it's Artemis, Wally. May I come in?" At least to myself, I sound scared, scared of what I had said to him and scared of what he was going to think now that I had come crawling back.

"I don't really have anything to say to you right now."

"Well, I… I have something to say to you, Wally. Would you please let me in?"

I hear a sigh through the door. "Fine."

He opens the door up. "What do you want, Artemis?" He sounds dead inside, like his heart has been ripped out.

"I…" A single tear rolls down my left cheek. I'm not usually this vulnerable, but even though we supposedly hate each other, something about Wally West just makes Artemis Crock a completely different person. "I'm sorry, Wally. You know I didn't mean that. What I said."

He shakes his head. "That's what you're going with? 'You know I didn't mean that?' Well, guess what, Artemis? I didn't and don't know you didn't mean that. Do you even remember what you said?"

I nod sadly, and think back to about an hour ago.

 _I'm standing in the kitchen making tea, and he's doing his usual thing - tearing apart the fridge for food._

 _I see M'gann float in behind me, and I see him grin at her and wink. "Hey, Megalicious."_

 _She smiles and rolls her eyes. "Hey, Wally. Hey, Artemis."_

 _He keeps grinning at her. "So, Megs, I've got two tickets to one of those magic shows you love so much later today. Real romantic. Wanna come with?"_

 _I snap. I don't know why, but all my irritation and frustration and repressed feelings about Wally boil to the surface at once. "Oh my god, Wally, are you that fucking oblivious? She's into Conner and he's into her, and the sooner you can wrap your head around that fact, the sooner you'll pull your head out of your ass and start helping us on missions instead of being a useless, lovestruck piece of shit!"_

 _M'gann is silent. Wally is gone before I can even process what I've just said._

'Yeah. I remember."

He's silent for a long, long time before he speaks again. "Do you actually feel that way?"

"Oh, no, not at all. I'm so sorry, Wally, I just… I don't know. I just lost it. I didn't mean any of it."

"Do you… do you need to talk about it with someone?"

I look at him, amazed. I tore his heart out an hour ago, maybe less, and he's offering to help me?

"I… I don't know."

"Artemis… it's okay."

We're both quiet for a long time, staring into each other's eyes, and I don't know if Wally is feeling anything, _but I'm having to try really, really hard to not fall in love with him this very instant._

"Yeah. I think talking about it might be good."

He smiles softly. "Come on in."

* * *

Five years later, and his door has never been locked once since.

 **The first of 130. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it, and if you did, don't forget to review!**


	2. Papercut

**Papercut (Rated K)**

I'm pretty proud of the way I manage to keep my emotions in check.

Lord knows that I have stuff to be emotionally screwed up about.

There's my family, if you can call them that.

There's the Team not really trusting me fully.

There's Wally being the most insufferable, frustrating person of all time.

Usually, I'm pretty good about keeping this contained. Artemis Crock doesn't let her emotions get to her.

There's a reason I started that sentence with the word "usually".

The triggers can be anything. A tiny thing will happen that makes me extremely upset, even though I'm really getting upset about the mess that is my entire life.

This time, it's a papercut.

I'm in my room at the Cave, working on homework. It's late, and I don't think anybody is here. M'gann and Conner are out on a date, Robin is working with Batman in Gotham, Kaldur is showing Zatanna the Team's patrol routes, and I have no clue where Wally is, but I don't think he's here.

I'm doing math, and all of a sudden, when I go to write down a problem, the paper slices the middle finger of my right hand.

Sure, it stings, but there's no blood, and it's practically invisible.

I think that's what triggers me - the invisible injury reminds me of the invisible injuries that my dad used to give me, hitting me where he knew nobody other than me would see it.

Tears start flowing freely out of my eyes, and I don't know what's happening to me. _"Maybe it's hormones,"_ I wonder, as I think about the various reasons that I could be sobbing my eyes out in my room over a freaking papercut.

I'm not bothering to try to quiet my sobs. Nobody's in the Cave except me, and I can cry as loudly as I want to.

It feels good, in a way. Between the stupid rich bimbos I have to deal with at Gotham Academy and the problems I have with the Team, crying feels kind of nice. I have to keep this all bottled up. There's nobody I can talk to, and nobody I can go to with things like this. Not even my mother. So crying it out with nobody around feels like the right move.

And naturally, as soon as that thought crosses my mind, I hear a knock at the door.

"Um, Artemis, are you okay?"

Of course.

It has to be him.

Of all the people that could be around while I'm emotionally broken, Wally West is the one standing outside my door.

"Yeah, Wally, I'm fine." Even I don't believe myself. I'm choking out a sob while I say it.

"Can I, uh, come in?"

"No."

"Artemis…"

"Wally, I'm fine! Leave me alone!"

He opens the door to find me crying and slamming my fists against my desk and basically looking like a mix between a heartbroken twelve-year old and a two-year old throwing a tantrum.

"Artemis, what the hell happened?"

I look up, pissed off that he's now in my room. "Wally, I said to go away!"

He's by my side in an instant. "No. Now tell me what's wrong."

"I… I don't know." I don't know why I concede. I don't want to talk to him. I'm sure of it.

He notices my finger. There's not much too see, but there's pretty clear evidence that I got a papercut.

"Artemis… are you reacting like this to a papercut? Are you in that much pain?"

"No… I… I don't know… it just set me off for some reason…"

He sits down and gives me the look of a therapist, and despite myself, I find it a little adorable.

"Talk me through it. I've got all night."

And suddenly, I feel a little less messed up.


	3. Sunset

**Sunset (Rated T for language)**

I've always liked watching sunsets.

See, us speedsters, everything always goes so fast for us. Each one of us needs to find something that just sort of… slows up down, brings us back to Earth.

For me, that's watching the sun set each night. It calms me. Watching something that beautiful happen in slow motion like that is awe-inspiring. It brings me back down from the constant adrenaline high I'm on when I'm running.

This one was different, though. This time, I was trying to stop being so angry.

Artemis and I had always fought a lot. I had accepted that. No matter how gorgeous or strong or amazing I thought she was, she was always going to hate me, and I was always going to have to pretend to hate her.

I hated it, but I had accepted it. I knew that was just how the world sometimes worked.

This had been a bad one, though. I don't even remember how it started. She insulted me, I insulted her, and it escalated until we were screaming at each other and the whole Team was standing by, watching us, not having the slightest clue what to do to help or even get us to stop.

The one thing I do remember is how the fight ended.

* * *

 _"_ _Why do you hate me so much, Artemis? What could I ever have possibly done to you to deserve this? You've hated me since the second I met you, and I don't know why?"_

 _She paused, as if looking for the words to say what she knew she felt. And then she found the words, and she ripped my heart to pieces._

 _"_ _You don't deserve to be on this team, Wally. You flirt with M'gann even though she's clearly with Conner, you constantly endanger yourself and others on missions by being an idiot who relies too much on his superpowers and isn't smart enough to think tactically, and you've insulted me since the first five minutes I was here, even though all I wanted was to fit in and actually make friends here. And I let it get to me. Well, I'm done with that, Wally. So fuck you."_

 _I stood there for about ten seconds, completely silent, taking in the shock on everybody else's faces._

 _And then I ran._

* * *

I heard her footsteps from a mile away as I sat on the beach. I had just gone down to the beach at the bottom of the mountain to watch the sunset. I hadn't bothered hiding. I didn't think anybody would come for me, and if they did, I wouldn't care.

She sat down next to me, silently looking at me. I didn't even glance at her.

She sat next to me for a long time, as silent as I was. She was looking at me, though, and I was watching the day disappear.

"Wally, I''m sorry."

"Okay." She had to know that wasn't going to mean anything.

"I didn't mean it."

"Okay." I didn't want to hear it. Hearing the girl I was secretly in love with say something like that to me had literally torn me to pieces.

"Damn it, Wally! I'm trying to apologize!"

I finally pulled my eyes away from the sunset and looked at her. "Artemis, I don't really care. A lot of it was true, and the rest is just you hating me. It doesn't matter, but I'm not exactly in the mood to see you right now."

A tear rolled down her left cheek. "Wally, I… none of that was true."

I shrugged. "I flirt with M'gann even though she's clearly with Conner. That's true. I constantly endanger everybody on missions because I'm usually a liability. That's pretty fair. And I've been a dick to you since we met. I see a lot of truth in what you said. That doesn't mean I want to talk to you."

Another tear escaped her eyes, this one rolling down her right cheek. "Wally, I'm so, so sorry."

I shook my head sadly. "Don't be. Just leave." I turned my attention back to the sun.

"No."

I looked at her and raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not leaving, Wally. Everything I said is the exact opposite of how I feel."

Now both of my eyebrows were raised. "Meaning?"

She sighed, and the monologue she delivered was a lot different than the last. "Wally, I only get mad when you flirt with M'gann because I'm jealous. I'm more worried than anything else when you jeopardize missions - something you actually rarely do - because I'm terrified by the idea of something happening to you. And most importantly of all, I get so angry when we fight because it kills me that you don't feel the same way about me that I do about you. That's why I was so mad. That's why I said all of those things. It makes me so sad, so upset when I have to confront your hatred of me that I lash out because I don't know what else to do."

I was stunned. "Artemis, I… you're not the only one. Who feels that way, I mean. Arguing with you kills me because I don't mean a single word I say. I've just been doing it to throw off you and the Team. The only reason I still flirt with M'gann is because people wouldn't understand why I had stopped."

Her eyes opened wide. "You like me?"

I softly smiled. "Artemis, however I feel about you, it's much stronger than like. If you took away ninety-nine percent of the emotion I feel for you, it might be like. How I feel now… I can't describe it."

Her smile was so much prettier than the setting sun I had come out to watch ever could be.

"I feel exactly the same way, Wally."

I kissed Artemis Crock for the first time as the sun disappeared. It was the greatest sunset of my life.


	4. Award

**Award**

 **Rated K for kissing. (Ha! Get it? Because kissing starts with K? Sorry. I'll leave now.)**

 **This is an AU where Wally and Artemis aren't together yet, even though Wally's graduating high schooL**

Valedictorian.

Wally had no idea how he had done it. He knew he was smart, but he considered himself a scientist and little else when it came to school.

But here he was, at his high school graduation, and he was the valedictorian of Central City High.

He looked up nervously as he saw his school's principal getting ready to announce him. He knew who was in the audience.

He and Artemis had been friends for a while now. They had been on the Team for a couple of years together already - they had pretty much gotten over their differences, and they were actually good friends. But there was a problem.

Wally was hopelessly in love with Artemis, and she had no idea.

The way her hair shined as it fell down her back, the way her eyes sparkled when she was planning something devious, the way she laughed when he actually managed to say something funny - he loved all of it, and he loved her.

But he didn't have time to focus on any of that now.

 _"_ _And now, ladies and gentlemen, presenting your class speaker and valedictorian, Wallace West!"_

Wally smiled inwardly as he listened to the applause he was receiving from the crowd. He hadn't expected to get as much as he was.

He cleared his throat. "Um, hi, everyone. I'm Wally, but you know that. We've been together for a long time now. High school… well, it was a really, really long four years for me." He smiled. "Seriously, though, I enjoyed it. I guess that's why I'm standing up here now."

He saw her in the crowd and shivered. Her smile was beautiful. He looked down at the speech he had written… and decided he didn't need it. He had enough inspiration in the crowd. In her. "I don't know everything about all of you. I don't know anything about some of you. And that goes both ways - I just joked that you all knew who I was, and that's probably not true. I would bet there's at least one person in the audience thinking 'Who in the world is this idiot?' And that's okay."

He paused again to clear his throat.

"We all have our own stories. Nobody's life has been perfect. I mean, how could it be? We just spent four years in _high school,_ for crying out loud!" That got a few chuckles.

"Some people get scared when people get close to figuring them out." He was unconsciously looking right at her. His eyes were just naturally drawn to her. "And that's okay. We all have secrets. We all have things that we'd rather people not know about. But that's why we have each other. We're there for each other through everything. I don't know all of you very well, but I would like to think that if one of you needed my help, I'd be there. I'd like to think the same of everybody else."

"I guess what I'm trying to say is… look at the people around you. Some of them are your friends, some of them aren't. Some of them might even be people you don't like. But when it all comes down to it…" He looked her right in the eyes as he said it. "… you might find that people care about you a lot more than you might think."

He smiled at the crowd. "Thanks for listening, guys. It was a fun four years. I'll miss you all."

He walked off the stage, and all he could think about was Artemis.

* * *

He found her pretty quickly after graduation was over.

He grinned. "What did you think of my speech? Pretty great, huh?"

She smiled. "Not bad, West. I liked the last part. I guess it's nice to think about people caring more than you might expect."

He shrugged. "Yeah, it is."

She walked a bit closer to him. "Wally?"

He looked at her, amazed at how cute she looked with the small smile she was giving him. "Yeah, Artemis?"

"I care more than you think I do."

His eyes widened a bit before he grinned. "I can promise you that the feeling's mutual."

He kissed her, and it was like nothing else had ever happened and nothing else would ever happen. Kissing her was the only thing he could imagine in that moment. It was everything he had ever dreamed of and so much more. It was…

"Hi, guys!"

Dick threw an arm around each of their shoulders as they quickly broke apart.

"Happy graduation, Wally!"

He looked at him. "You are such a dick."


End file.
